


The Decision

by mattmetzger



Series: A Temporary Madness [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:34:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattmetzger/pseuds/mattmetzger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been together two years, and the decisions they have to make now are going to shape the rest of...well, everything. </p>
<p>Spock/McCoy, sequel to 'A Temporary Madness.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arc Two, Part One

Orgasm hit him like a freight train. Everything – the world, the universe, his sense of self, his awareness, his cognitive functions and his baser instincts – was blasted apart by a nuclear explosion ripping through him, top to toe, and pausing even time itself. It barrelled through his blood and fried his nerves, shattered his bones and he didn’t even care, the overstimulation humming like electricity as he came down from the high, inch by shivering inch, and sank bonelessly into the messy tangle of shaking limbs beneath him.

 

“Fuck,” he breathed the word into a damp, jumping pulse point.

 

“Indeed,” Spock’s voice was collected, but his breath was gone, and McCoy smirked into that neck, the aftershocks of _sex_ beginning to rattle away.

 

“I’m not gettin’ the cloth,” he mumbled, and grinned when there was a wriggle of movement and the distinct imprint of teeth dug into his shoulder. “Nope. Not movin’.”

 

He slid to the side and the wall when Spock slipped out from under him, curling into sweat-damp, rumpled sheets and dragging them down with his feet until he was shamelessly and obnoxiously naked, taking up eighty percent of Spock’s single bed. His nerves were buzzing, almost singing to each other like crystal wine glasses in an echoing room, and flaring in an almost-pain when a cool cloth scraped over his too-sensitive dick. He grumbled around his satisfaction briefly before latching onto the nearest arm and tugging, squirming around until he had both arms latched around Spock’s ribs and the brief struggle abated, leaving them crushed together in the narrow space, too hot and too tangled and too uncomfortable, but both too unwilling to separate in the hazy, limited-functionality mindset of the afterglow.

 

“There’s no fuckin’ room,” he mumbled into the now-accessible dark hair. “Move in with me. I have a double bed.”

 

Spock made a noise that might have been amusement, scepticism, or merely the effort of reaching a comfortable position and throwing the cloth over his shoulder and onto the floor with a wet slap. His hand made a similarly damp sound when it landed squarely on McCoy’s chest, curling loosely around the hair and tugging briefly before he settled and relaxed, obviously intending to doze.

 

This left McCoy jammed between extremely sharp elbows, ribs and shoulders, and a wall. It wasn’t the most uncomfortable position he’d ever slept in, but it certainly wasn’t making the top ten luxurious moments either – and yet McCoy wouldn’t have exchanged it for the world. They were both sweaty, messy and dishevelled; the bed was ruined, the sheets on the floor and one pillow somehow on the windowsill clear across the room. Spock’s leg was locked over both of his, and the tangled bottom sheet was threatening to cut off McCoy’s circulation. The heat radiating from Spock’s ribs and neck was fierce, and the air creeping over McCoy’s feet from the draught through the open bedroom door too cool. There was a hand tugging on hair dangerously close to his nipple, and another jammed somewhere under his back, the fingers still curled into bruise-inducing wedges.

 

And Spock’s breathing was slowing against McCoy’s collarbone, settling into his usual post-coital coma – and quite suddenly, McCoy wanted to stir him up again and get an answer.

 

Shifting was a challenge - unhooking Spock’s leg from over his produced a low grumble, which turned into a narrow-eyed glower when he shifted above him and hauled him back into the middle of the thin mattress, sliding back over him and burrowing into his neck with his teeth, bestowing another reddening mark onto the jugular. After a moment, Spock’s hands came up to cup and turn his head until there was the sharp sting of a bite to his earlobe, and McCoy chuckled breathlessly through the tugging sensation of having the base of his ear sucked.

 

“Vampire,” McCoy accused, tugging free and nipping at Spock’s own earlobe before heading for the mouth. Spock had sharp teeth, and he rolled his tongue under them before pressing in and sucking the air out of his lungs and feeling the hollow jump of his chest. He retreated to bite down warningly hard on Spock’s lower lip, tugging it out before letting go, and saying, “I meant it.”

 

“You meant what?” Spock murmured, preoccupied with trying to get back into McCoy’s mouth. His eyes were slitted in exhaustion, dark pools barely visible between the skin; it was a drunk look, a heady look, and a goddamn should-be-illegal _alluring_ look.

 

McCoy kissed him until he couldn’t breathe, and then kissed him some more for good measure.

 

“Move in with me. Seriously.”

 

Spock completely ignored him, beginning to lick a path back up to his abused right ear.

 

“Hey,” McCoy pinned him by the shoulders, rising up to press his full weight onto Spock’s upper arms. “Seriously. Move in with me.”

 

Spock stared up at him - almost frowning, but not quite - before obstinately pulling him down into another kiss and beginning to shift his knees to bracket McCoy’s hips again. “If you must ask seriously, do not ask in bed,” he murmured, locking his hand on the back of his neck and arching his head back in blatant invitation.

 

“Fine,” McCoy growled, burying his teeth briefly into the pressure point behind Spock’s ear and getting an almost violent shudder. “Best anniversary ever.”

 

*

 

The tenth of April until McCoy’s break for lunch was a hungover-glazed blur of exhaustion. Their date for their second anniversary - a supposed civil affair of dinner downtown - had ended in running from Spock’s apartment at half past eight the next morning to shower and change before dashing into work late for his shift. Dr. Puri, the asshole, had taken the opportunity to notice, and commented on McCoy’s apparent change in cologne. He’d been shunted straight into the geriatric ward, and elderly people apparently had nothing better to do than speculate about why the doctor was walking so stiffly and looked tired. He felt like an oversexed teenager, as anybody would after energetic sex with a man who was, quite frankly, ridiculously good-looking, and he was thus so distracted that it was not until he managed to sit down with a tall glass of water, two aspirins, and lunch, that he realised that Spock had never actually given him an answer, the tricky son-of-a-bitch.

 

Over the past two years, McCoy had gotten increasingly used to the fact that Spock could, would and did run rings around him mentally, and often for his own sadistic foreign amusement. He might have only been mixed race, but the Chinese sadism (Japanese, same thing) had overwhelmed any good American decency in him, and he toyed with McCoy like a cat with a half-dead bird, batting it about the floor without care for decorum or discretion. And McCoy knew that it probably said something odd about him that he _enjoyed_ it. He'd spent two years fighting for every inch of ground he'd gained, arguing and sniping and snapping back and forth in endless circles, and he had loved every last damn minute of it. Last night was nothing new - the sex (thank God), the date, the evasive questioning, none of it. Spock could avoid anything he wanted, unless McCoy went to the effort of pinning him down and screwing the answer out of him - and last night, even that hadn't worked.

 

And that just wouldn’t do.

 

Spock didn’t typically share his lunch break - the labs apparently worked on the more human hour of one o’clock for lunch - and in any case, the labs had the same rules as the hospital regarding cell phones. So McCoy didn’t expect a reply, but sent a text anyway to jog his memory when he finally did turn the damn thing on again.

 

_You still didn’t give me an answer._

True to form, it was roughly half-past one, just as McCoy was coming off his coffee break (and thus displaying perfect Spockian timing as per fucking usual) when his cell beeped in response - and once again, Spock completely avoided an answer.

 

_An answer to which question?_

It was another five hours before he came off-shift entirely, and managed to send a reply, even while knowing Spock would be busy – he was meeting his sponsor tonight, and that usually devolved into a few too many drinks and a cab home. Christopher Pike did not tend to take ‘I’m not drinking tonight’ for an answer, apparently. (It also marked the one and only time McCoy had seen Spock persuaded into being tipsy rather than choosing to go there independently, and therefore had granted Pike enormous respect and admiration in McCoy's book.)

 

_Move in with me._

He then pushed it to the back of his mind, going through the post-work motions of actually shaving properly instead of the rushed job he’d done that morning, running through the chores he usually did on a Wednesday night, and texting Jim to ask why his car was parked up outside McCoy’s house. (Apparently, he was testing whether parking it in the sun killed the pine tree freshener taped to the rear view mirror.) Therefore it was at least a quarter past ten when Spock texted back -

 

_That is a statement, not a question. I doubt your grade point average was maintained by your English lessons._

\- being his usual smartassed self.

 

McCoy gave up the text-chase, and called.

 

“Hel-”

 

“Just answer the goddamn question.”

 

Spock paused. McCoy could faintly hear the television in the background. “That was not a question.”

 

“Fine. I’ll rephrase it.”

 

“Very well.”

 

“Just answer the goddamn statement.”

 

“How does one answer a statement?”

 

“Just fucking do it.”

 

Spock paused again, and McCoy just _knew_ that he was being toyed with. Again. Why did he always seem to date people that behaved like cats? Spock toyed with him like he was an almost-dead mouse but a mercy killing would be too fast, and Joss…well. Joss had that yarn thing.

 

“Perhaps one statement requires another.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

“You have carpets,” Spock said - and hung up.

 

McCoy stared at his cell phone in dumbfounded shock, then hit redial before he could really think too much about it. The phone rang out, and so he thumbed out the fastest text of his life, hoping that he had - suspecting that he had - understood the implications of that reply correctly.

 

_We’ll get rid of the carpets._

A moment later: _Very well._

He found himself grinning even as he asked, _Is that a yes?_

_It is a very well._

McCoy hadn’t been married to a lawyer for nothing. _Answer the following question with “yes” or “no.” Did you just agree to move in with me?_

And he was struck with the violent urge to punch the air like a meatheaded football player (or Jim) when a simple _yes_ was returned.


	2. Arc Two, Part Two

The storm had hit not half an hour after McCoy had gotten home, and calling Spock had sent him straight to voicemail. He’d known – immediately _known_ – that he would be out in the torrential rain (seriously, that shit made it look like India got it easy). He was supposed to be coming over for dinner and to actually _talk_ about moving in, rather than exchanging clumsy text messages and the odd sporadic phone call in the two days since McCoy had originally asked.

 

And Spock simply wasn’t smart enough to see the rain and think _better_ of using the goddamn deathtrap of a motorcycle. Oh no, he’d be out in it alright – and so McCoy was waiting, and had the front door open the moment the deep grumble of the bike began to creep up the street.

 

The leather was _drowned_.

 

The bike was gleaming in the downpour, scrubbed clean by the force of it, and the leather was shiny and wet as Spock drew out his keys and secured the back wheel to the frame with a lock chain. It usually creaked as he moved, but it was silent as the grave, and the moment Spock stepped under the porch roof, he removed his helmet, and a good half-pint of water flooded from his hair and face. The slightly squelchy sound of his boots suggested that his feet were ankle deep in the crap too, and – well. Biking leather was heavy, but it wasn’t watertight if it was older than a couple of months. Just (McCoy hoped) road-surfacing-tight.

 

“ _Damn_ ,” he whistled. The last time he’d seen Spock _that_ wet, they’d been in the same shower. And he’d looked infinitely more impressed. Speaking of which... “Go on, get in the shower and warm up.”

 

Spock made a noise like a discontented cat – or his own motorcycle engine, McCoy couldn’t quite place it – and shimmied off his boots before even stepping foot in the hall. His black socks left damp footprints, and he stripped those off just inside, grimacing at the feel of them. McCoy took the backpack and slung it into the kitchen to drip on the tiles, and chuckled at Spock's expression.

 

“My bathrobe’s on the back of the bathroom door,” he said. “Strip off and I’ll get that lot through the dryer.”

 

“The contents of my bag...”

 

“Yeah, I’ll put your overnight stuff through too. Go on, git. You’re dripping on my floor.”

 

Spock made another disgruntled noise, and McCoy smirked, leaning forward to kiss him quickly. His lips were fucking _frozen_.

 

“ _Git_ ,” he said. “Use whatever’s in there, I really don’t care.”

 

“Thank you,” Spock said, surprising McCoy briefly, before shucking his jacket unceremoniously onto the _floor_ and heading upstairs without a word.

 

“Musta been cold,” McCoy muttered to himself, picking up the sodden leather between finger and thumb and hanging it over the bottom of the stair rail to drip-dry onto the floor. It was twice as heavy as usual with the water-weight, and unreasonably cold on the outside to counteract the radiator-warmth on the inside. He left it to dry there; it wouldn’t do any harm – or at least none he cared about. Rummaging through the pockets, he found a sodden wallet that he laid to dry on the side table, Spock's cell phone zipped into the inside pocket and thankfully, therefore, dry as a nun's ass-crack, and a sparse bunch of keys, onto which he surreptitiously added one of his spare house keys before dropping it into the key bowl.

 

They looked...at home, beside his own.

 

The pipes groaned upstairs, and he turned to eye the drenched backpack, sitting forlornly in its own puddle by the front door.

 

“It never rains in California, my _ass_.”

 

*

 

McCoy switched the kettle on the moment that the pipes cranked off upstairs. The tumble dryer hummed to itself contentedly in the corner – probably literally, given that McCoy never bothered to use it ordinarily – and the weather girl was telling herself, rather unsurprisingly, that the forecast was just a little bit soggy. The dark cloud overhead, coupled with the encroaching nightfall, meant that the lights were on, gleaming off the surfaces and the cracked tile by the garage door, flooding the kitchen with a psychological warmth that wasn’t _really_ there.

 

The footsteps on the stairs began their quiet journey just as the kettle brought itself to boil, and by the time Spock’s shadow fell in the kitchen doorway, there was a fresh mug of coffee waiting.

 

“Here,” McCoy turned to pass it over – and paused, staring.

 

Spock had changed into dark sweatpants hanging a little loose around his slim frame, and a t-shirt a size too large with ‘Ole Miss’ in faded letters across the chest, misshapen from the ill fit until they read something closer to 'Olms.' For the first time, McCoy eyed his feet in socks that were not black (pale grey, as a matter of fact) and even as McCoy gawped, Spock pulled a faded blue hoodie, once again emblazoned with ‘Ole Miss’, over his head, settling into its baggy folds comfortably.

 

Every item was _McCoy’s_ , and something in his brain short-circuited in a tiny burst of flames at the sight of Spock wearing his clothes.

 

“Leonard?” Spock asked uncertainly.

 

McCoy then realised he was attempting to take the offered cup, and let go hastily. Spock cupped his hands around it, watching McCoy and frowning.

 

“If...it is an imposition...”

 

“No!” McCoy blurted out. “I, uh. Shit. I don’t mind, just...I think you blew something in my brain.”

 

Spock looked vaguely alarmed.

 

“That really shouldn’t be as hot as it is, but _damn_ ,” McCoy whistled, shaking his head – then removed the coffee mug again to the side, and dragged Spock into a deep kiss, crushing him close – the fabric crumpling loosely between them until his grip hit skin and muscle and bone and not a whole lot of fat – into his own lust.

 

Spock’s fingers were immediately in his hair again – spiders, skittering across his scalp and tugging, biting, at the hair in little, spark-inducing clumps. And from here, McCoy was introduced to the second fact that Spock was not only wearing his clothes, but wearing his _smell_ – the smell of him ingrained into his old clothes, the fresher smell of him granted by the use of his bathroom products. He smelled like _McCoy’s_ , like he downright _owned_ him, and every pint of his blood attempted to head south at the same time, leaving him somewhat light-headed.

 

Before he quite knew what was going on, he’d backed Spock into the wall, and gotten his hands under Spock’s – _his_ – t-shirt and hoodie, the ribs straining against his hands. The wall and his own hips kept Spock pinned, and after a pause, those powerful thighs braced either side of his pelvis and those slender ankles locked around the back of his legs in a blatant, practically wanton display. When he tweaked a nipple with his thumb, the rhythm of Spock’s breathing stuttered fractionally, and McCoy bit down on his earlobe and groaned at the shuddering gasp.

 

“Leonard – _Leonard_...”

 

“What?” he mumbled, licking a path down his neck.

 

“We must eat first.”

 

“I’m plannin’ on it.”

 

“ _Food_ , Leonard,” Spock’s fingers were almost massaging his scalp, luxurious and tantalising. “If you wish for this to last _any_ length of time, then I will need to eat.”

 

McCoy paused, and drew back enough to scowl at him. “You haven’t eaten today.”

 

“Not...much.”

 

McCoy groaned, and bit his neck for good measure. Or punishment, but the rock of Spock’s hips suggested it was anything but. “Idiot. Alright. Food first. And then I’m taking you upstairs and unwrapping you again.”

 

“I am not a present,” Spock murmured into his mouth – for all his words, reluctant to disengage.

 

“Yeah y’are,” McCoy returned, nipping at his lower lip and stroking his hands down the lean thighs bracketing his hips before stepping back and allowing Spock to actually put his feet to the floor again. “Present wearing my damn paper, and I’m gonna rip it off you and _explore_.”

 

“You have already explored.”

 

“Yeah, but now you’re all wrapped up in my stuff.”

 

“I do not understand.”

 

“I don’t care,” McCoy replied, rubbing his hands up Spock’s sides – although on the outside this time – and sucking another kiss out of his mouth. “And you don’t need to understand anything except that once dinner’s over, I’m takin’ you upstairs and fucking you until you can’t remember your own name.”

 

Spock nosed at his stubble and pressed a kiss into the underside of his jaw. “As usual then.”

 

“Whatever you’re makin’, make it _fast_ ,” McCoy growled, finally releasing him (with a phenomenal exertion of willpower) and stepping back to lean against the washing machine. “I can’t be held responsible for what happens otherwise.”

 

“Very well,” Spock said, and offered one more brief kiss. “Spanish omelette?”

 

*

 

The moment that McCoy returned to the bed, Spock curled around him, and received a huffed chuckle and a kiss as they settled around each other. Spock was exhausted, drained of any energy dinner may have granted him, and surrounded by both the smell of McCoy in the hoodie that he still wore (and he had never had sex half-clothed before, so the experience was a novel one) and the man himself, as McCoy’s arms closed around him and they settled back into the mattress.

 

“God _damn_ ,” McCoy murmured, his bare legs tangling with Spock’s. The sweatpants had been lost on the stairs, and McCoy seemed to have had a minor aneurysm on the discovery that Spock had not bothered with underwear. “You’re going to kill me.”

 

Spock shifted against the soreness of his own body, and thought that McCoy had that the wrong way around.

 

“Seriously,” McCoy continued, “I don’t know if I can _survive_ living with you. Not if you’re going to be that damn hot every night of the week.”

 

“I am certain you will become accustomed to it.”

 

McCoy snorted. “I don’t think so. You’re sex on legs some days, you know that?”

 

Spock hummed and scratched lightly at a smattering of hair on McCoy’s left pectoral.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” McCoy’s fingers dug into Spock’s shoulder blade and smoothed the pinch away. “All days, let’s face it. With that ass, you can’t be anything else.”

 

Spock settled further into the crook of McCoy’s neck and watched the rise and fall of his ribs through half-lidded eyes.

 

“Hey,” McCoy’s voice dropped to little more than a murmur. “When’s your contract on the apartment run down?”

 

“The first of September,” Spock murmured, and McCoy’s fingers – thickly calloused at the tips, and dry like the Nevada desert – came to rub behind his ear briefly before returning to his shoulder.

 

McCoy chuckled. “Happy birthday to me, then.”

 

“Almost,” Spock allowed, letting his breathing slow.

 

“’Night, darlin’,” McCoy murmured, stroking his fingers over the back of the hand Spock still rested on his chest.

 

By morning, they had shifted apart in their sleep – but those hands were still loosely intertwined.


	3. Arc Two, Part Three

Spock woke slowly, to the strange sensation of being enfolded twice over in heavy fabric, and sunlight slanted through the room at entirely the wrong angle. When he turned his face away from the light, the smell of the sheets around his face was more recognisable, and he cracked open his eyes to peer at McCoy’s sparse bedroom tiredly. The man himself was gone, but his smell – and his bathrobe, slung over the chair in the corner – remained.

 

The fabric was explained when Spock tried to sit up and found himself still half-dressed in McCoy’s old university hoodie; the motion was less pleasant, a sharp spike of pain driving through his upper thighs and backside in a narrow slice, and he took several deep breaths to ward it off. When it eased, he slipped from the thick mattress gingerly to take the abandoned bathrobe – still faintly warm – for himself, and inhale a deep lungful of the scent clinging to it as he plucked his bag from the floor. McCoy had to have brought it up after rising; Spock distinctly remembered their neglecting any such organisation the night before.

 

He hunched over his inhaler almost protectively as he took his morning dose, shielding it from the sight of anyone who happened to open the bedroom door at that moment. The taste was cool, stale and repulsive; he pushed the plastic to the bottom of his bag the moment that he could, hiding it from view again, and grateful that McCoy had removed himself from the vicinity at least for this. He choked down his pill with no water, loathe to take it downstairs with him, and pushed the bag under the chair with his foot when the hated ritual was done with, as though he could ignore it for the rest of the day.

 

Drawing the robe more tightly around himself, he opened the bedroom door.

 

He had rarely seen McCoy’s house in the early morning. McCoy worked typically from eleven o’clock in the morning, and so was not prone to rising early; if they spent a working night together, it was usually at Spock’s apartment to allow him to get ready for work at a not unreasonable hour. And so the long morning shadows in the hall changed the shape of the place; the banisters cast thick stripes down into the hall, and streaks of sunlight cascaded across the pale wood from the conservatory at the back, hitting the front door and glinting off the gold rim of the spyhole.

 

The crinkle of the carpet on his skin told Spock that he had involuntarily curled his toes, and he relaxed the muscles again, stroking a hand along the railing as he took the first halting steps down into the rest of the house, mindful of the stabbing pain and inwardly pleased at the memory of the pleasure for which this was the price.

 

When the man responsible appeared, a dark smear of unshaven humanity poured into worn jeans lounging against the kitchen doorframe with all the tension of water freeflowing from a clumsily-spilled jug, his lazy smirk was the most brilliant thing that Spock had ever seen.

 

“Hey.”

 

Spock reached; McCoy’s hands, wide and warm and rough, caught him at the ribs and a chuckle arose in the middle of the kiss, like a secret.

 

“Huh,” McCoy grinned. “I think I broke your brain.”

 

“I think,” Spock murmured, fascinated by the gently pulsing heat under McCoy’s skin where his neck melted into his shoulders, “that you may be right.”

 

“Let’s get that rebooted then, darlin’,” McCoy pushed a kiss – secret, like the laugh – into the skin of his temple, and one of those surgeon’s hands slid up his back. “Gonna need to be able to think, if we’re gonna discuss the logistics of this.”

 

“This?”

 

“Me gettin’ to see you like this every mornin’,” McCoy offered, guiding him into the kitchen and flicking on the coffee machine in passing. “How I haven’t just cuffed you to the bed is a goddamn miracle.”

 

“An appreciated one,” Spock allowed himself to be hauled to the counter, where McCoy unceremoniously jammed bread into the toaster and slid heavy, secure arms around his waist to kiss him again. The faint splash of orange against the back of his mouth was as bright as the gleam of sky through the window. They broke apart only when the coffee machine gurgled, and Spock untangled himself with more than a little regret to pour himself a mug and feel the first stirrings of true wakefulness when the aroma leaked into the room.

 

“So,” McCoy stole a sip and rubbed at the small of his back with the heel of his palm, soothing some of the ache. “Seein’ as how it’s brightened up since yesterday, I was thinkin’ we could take the day, find some green space and some goddamn _quiet_ away from the city, and start working out how we’re gonna do this.”

 

“Over the summer,” Spock murmured, closing his eyes, and shamelessly dropped his head onto McCoy’s shoulder. If he could have purred, he would as blunt fingernails rose to scratch lightly through his hair.

 

“I’m feelin’ good enough right now,” McCoy said lowly as the toaster popped, “you might even be able to persuade me to try out that death trap of a bike of yours.”

 

He peeled himself away to see to breakfast, and Spock blinked hazily through the coffee steam.

 

“While I would normally take that opportunity,” he said slowly, “I do not believe that you have left me capable of riding today.”

 

McCoy choked, let out a shocked laugh, and said: “Of riding _what_?”

 

“Anything,” Spock deadpanned.

 

The next kiss tasted of orange and coffee and amusement; he had not known, once, that amusement had a taste.

 

*

 

It was surprisingly warm for April; the fog had lifted for just about the first time since November, and McCoy seriously thought about wearing his shades to drive for a moment before Spock's sceptical expression persuaded him otherwise. He wasn't, however, open to being persuaded to drop his plans for the day, and just after one in the afternoon managed to bully Spock into the car and shut him up with a kiss and a nectarine for the drive.

 

There was a park on the outskirts of the city, out on the road to Clearlake, that McCoy had discovered when Joss was pregnant (and had discovered thanks to the need to get away from a pregnant law student). It was a sprawling, empty thing with half-tended paths and picnic tables that, given the lack of people, seemed to serve no purpose beyond being old and worn decorations. It was a field faking it at being a park, and McCoy had always loved it.

 

They took lunch and McCoy's beaten-up laptop and Spock's medication tucked away in the back of the glove compartment, and occupied one of the benches almost a half-mile from the road where there was nothing but the air and some obnoxious bird squawking its brains out in an attempt to find a fuck. The emptiness of the park had one distinct advantage; McCoy could hook his foot around Spock's ankle, and it wouldn't be rejected.

 

"Okay," he said, once Spock had worked his way through most of the nectarines in that methodical way he had of demolishing orange fruits. "So you're out of your place at the end of August?"

 

"I renew it yearly."

 

"Not this year," he smirked. "Pretty sure that'll be a weekend, so book it off and we'll take the time to shift your stuff and christen my house."

 

"We have already christened your house."

 

"Yeah, but it'll be your house too," McCoy replied flatly. "Major upheavals mean christenings, just like when you have a baby."

 

"I have no intention of having a baby," Spock said, offering a stray segment.

 

"Thank God," McCoy popped it in his mouth and squeezed the juice out between his back teeth. "I'll get the carpeting on the landing and stairs replaced soon as, but the living room'll take a bit more time..."

 

"Leonard, I agreed to move in, not to undertake a remodelling project," Spock gave him a _look_. "I have not suffered yet."

 

"You've not been in the house more than forty-eight hours at a time yet," McCoy argued. "Shut it. The carpets are coming off."

 

Spock rolled his eyes and started to dissect another nectarine. "If you insist. I see little point in making solid plans..."

 

"Like what and when to tell Jim?" McCoy drawled.

 

Spock cocked his head. "I will handle Jim."

 

"That sounded ominous," McCoy chuckled. "Indulge me - get some days off around the end of August, and we can get your stuff settled in and fuck in every room in the house except the study."

 

"Why...?"

 

"It's a dust mine," McCoy said.

 

"You will have to set up a joint account for the bills."

 

"Spock..."

 

"Leonard. I am not going to live with you without some financial contribution."

 

"You sure as shit ain't paying rent."

 

"No, but I can contribute towards the mortgage," Spock replied evenly. "I am not a toy to be paid for."

 

"Really? Costs about twenty dollars, last I heard."

 

Spock gave him a look that was either murderous or lustful. Or both, which was a bit creepy. "This is non-negotiable. Either I contribute towards the household bills, or I remain in my apartment."

 

"You and your goddamn pride," McCoy grumbled. "You have enough to handle with your medical insurance."

 

"I do not live in a _box_ , Leonard..."

 

"Looks like a box to me."

 

"...and I am not so constrained by the insurance that I am unable to afford my phone bill or year-round heating."

 

"But it doesn't leave you with a lot left over, now does it?"

 

Spock actually _threw_ a piece of peel at him, and it bounced off the end of his nose. "Given that even half of the water bill for your house will be less than paying the entire bill for my apartment, moving would allow my income to go further regardless."

 

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Still..."

 

"Leonard. I am not negotiating this. I will pay half the bills."

 

"Alright, alright," McCoy capitulated, holding up his hands. "I'm not happy about it, but alright. I'll see to it at the end of this quarter."

 

"I am not asking you to be happy about it," Spock returned loftily, and McCoy laughed, reaching to squeeze his wrist.

 

"I am though. Morning sex and free cooking. I'm pretty stoked."

 

"You get those already."

 

"Not every day."

 

"I hardly think you will be receiving sex _every_ morning," Spock's borderline tension from the discussion eased, and McCoy slid his fingers down around his hand.

 

"We'll see about that."

 

*

 

Spock closed the apartment door behind him and surveyed the room with a critical eye. There were fresh rings from his morning coffee on the counter; his boots were sat on a sprawling pile of newspaper, mud flaking from the toes where he had yet to sit down and brush them off properly; and the faint smell of curry lingered from the leftovers in the oven. The blinds were still parted from the day before; the city lights shimmered in the distance, hazy under the falling fog that smeared the window.

 

It was his. Spock had never much understood the distinction that Westerners placed between a house and a home - both were, after all, a place in which one lived. He supposed that some people became attached to their place of abode; Neil had certainly harboured one for the apartment above the bay, and that was why Spock had been the one to leave. He could very vaguely remember his father's preference for the house outside Sendai to the Kyoto apartment, but he could not remember the reasons why.

 

For all his lack of understanding of the things that made a house a home, though, Spock would miss this apartment a little. There had been many long, quiet nights here in Jim or Nyota's company, and even McCoy's in the last two years. The view in particular would be a loss; the security of being able to shut the door on the universe and have the time and space to himself...

 

He had forgotten, he supposed, how to cohabit with another, and he was unsure whether the adjustment would be any easier - or more successful - this time around.


	4. Arc Two, Part Four

There was one blessing to his Fridays-versus-Sunday-nights arrangement, and that was that it was far easier to find a tradesman available to rip up his carpets and put down the new boards than it had been when he'd done a Monday to Friday rotation in the clinics in Mississippi. As such, McCoy was off the phone and setting out the beers by the time Jim hammered on his door, bashing to the tune of _Radio Gaga_ until he heard the bolt sliding back.

 

"Here," he shoved a tupperware box into McCoy's chest. "Sulu made extra curry and told me to stay out until he's done with his fencing movie."

 

"They have fencing movies?"

 

"Apparently," Jim said. "It's all in Jap, too, but he kicked me out when I asked if there was some freaky Japanese porn at the end."

 

"I'm not surprised," McCoy said, but took the box. Sulu might have been one of Jim's pissier lodgers (although lodging with Jim probably made anyone pissy) but he was a mean cook, and could actually make food with some goddamn _spice_ to it, unlike all these wimps and limp-wristed weirdos out on the west coast.

 

"You wanted to talk to me?" Jim prompted, following him into the kitchen and snatching up the closest beer bottle. He prodded the notes from McCoy's phone call with the carpeting company, and added: "Redecorating?"

 

"Yup."

 

He took an unheathily large swallow. "Anyway. You wanted to talk."

 

"Yeah."

 

"Oh my God, are you breaking up with me?"

 

McCoy snorted. "Yeah, that's it exactly."

 

"Well, shit," Jim said mournfully. "So who gets custody of the monster?"

 

"Her mom," McCoy said flatly. "Actually, it's about Spock."

 

"Never woulda guessed, Bones," Jim grinned. "You _always_ want to talk about Spock. Do you ever talk to _him_?"

 

"Nope, just fuck him," McCoy said easily, dropping into a kitchen chair. After a moment, Jim unrolled from the counter and sat opposite. "Seriously, though. It's been a while..."

 

"Yeah, I'd say two years counts," Jim rolled his eyes. " _Bones_ , get to the point."

 

"I asked Spock to move in with me."

 

Jim's eyebrows shot up, and he hastily swallowed a large mouthful before spluttering, "Seriously?"

 

"Yes."

 

He blinked. He really did have the bluest eyes, McCoy thought suddenly. "As in - here? Move in here, with you?"

 

He nodded.

 

"He said yes, right?"

 

McCoy couldn't help but smile; it was like he couldn't have said, "Yeah, he did," without grinning halfway through.

 

Jim's answering beam was a balm. McCoy had never been in the habit of letting the opinions of others dictate his actions - if he had, he would never have slept with Joss, never mind married her and had a daughter with her; he would never have left Georgia, never mind for Mississippi and eventually California; he would never have even left Dahlonega, instead sticking around to work in the garages with his brother-in-law Keith, and eventually end his life in a drink-and-Bible-fuelled despondency at sixty, with nothing to be proud of beyond having made his momma happy. He had never been that type of a man; he could remember being seven and determined to do the things that made himself proud, rather than his momma or his sisters or even his old man. As such, Jim could have sworn and raged and accused them both of a thousand things, and it would not have mattered -

 

And yet, his obvious delight _did_ matter. For all that his negativity would have been without much consequence in terms of what McCoy planned to do next, his positivity was important. He was McCoy's best friend, and quite possibly Spock's (aside from the mysterious Nyota-of-New-York) and if anybody's judgement _could_ be important, it was his. And McCoy, for all his reservations about ninety-eight percent of Jim's judgements, trusted them in this area.

 

" _Domesticity_ ," Jim teased, and McCoy kicked him under the table. "What? You're setting up house! Next it'll be wedding rings and a baby - or are you going to keep living in sin?"

 

"Having a baby _invites_ sin, Jim, take it from someone who knows."

 

Jim mock-saluted, and clanked their bottles together. "Then congratulations are in order, I guess. Always thought Spock'd make a good wife."

 

"He can do the cooking," McCoy agreed, and Jim laughed.

 

"You lucky bastard," he groused. "You're gonna wake up next to _that_ every morning."

 

McCoy grinned. "And don't I ever know it."

*****

Spock always knew when Jim had arrived; the buzzer didn't sound, but was _held_ , and after approximately ten seconds, would devolve into the beat of _Another One Bites The Dust_ until he depressed the door release. That would be followed by the same rhythm in heavy workman's boots being sounded up the concrete stairwell, and finally the chorus being hammered on his apartment door in Jim's northern ham-fisted manner.

 

"Hellooooooo, sunshine!" he beamed. It was a Thursday night, and raining. "I brought wine. _Good_ wine. It cost thirty dollars."

 

"Be still my beating heart," Spock droned tonelessly, taking the bottle and examining the label. For Jim, it _was_ good wine, and he eyed him suspiciously. "What do you want?"

 

"To talk, you antisocial son-of-a-bitch," Jim grinned, sticking his hands in his pockets like an extremely overgrown schoolboy. "Let me in."

 

"Your manners and charm are astounding."

 

"Yep. Open up," he kicked at the door, and Spock released the security chain. "Awesome. You got any pizza?"

 

"No."

 

"Takeout," he opined cheerfully. "Takeout, booze and a talk."

 

"I refuse to talk to you when drunk."

 

"Shame," Jim said. "I talk to _you_ when drunk."

 

"And I don't appreciate it."

 

"Pft," Jim snorted, threw a leather-coated arm around his shoulder and squeezed, and shucked his jacket. "Floor?"

 

"Hook."

 

"Floor," he said, and dumped it on the floor. Thankfully, he remembered to remove his boots before bouncing over to the couch and dropping onto the already-worn springs with a groan. "Oh my God, this thing is collapsing. Do you and Bones have sex on it?"

 

"Do you really want to know that?"

 

"You _do_ ," Jim said gleefully. "Amazing. I'm sitting where you lost your virginity."

 

"Connecticut is a very, very long way from that couch," Spock said. "And it was a floor, not a couch."

 

Jim whistled. "Classy. Anyway. Food. Booze. Talk. In that order. Whaddaya want, Chinese or Thai?"

 

An hour later found Jim inelegantly sprawled across half of Spock's couch, surrounded by boxes of food and a half-empty bottle of beer from the fridge (which Spock had not offered him, but had somehow been appropriated anyway). Spock, by contrast, sat tidily cross-legged on the other end, watching the demolishment of food with muted horror, and wondered if Jim really needed to add to the suffering of the dead animals in his order by mauling their remains.

 

"So," Jim said around a mouthful of chicken, and spraying crumbs. Spock winced. "Bones said you're moving in with him."

 

"I am."

 

"In that house?"

 

"No, Jim, into his car."

 

Jim paused long enough to punch his knee. "Bast'rd. Y'g'n't..."

 

"What?"

 

He swallowed; the result looked like a pelican swallowing a hockey puck. " _Are_. You. Going. To?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Huh," Jim poked at his food. "Really? I would've...jeez, what'd he bribe you with?"

 

"Daily intercourse."

 

"Oh, fair play," Jim allowed. "I wouldn't say no to that."

 

"With me, or with Leonard?"

 

"Either. Both. At the same time. Okay, maybe not at the same time, I bet Bones is an _animal_ in bed..."

 

Spock said nothing as to that.

 

"I've seen the way you walk on a Sunday," Jim said, and stuffed half a dead fowl in his mouth. "You're gonna end up walking like John Wayne, I hope you know that."

 

"Jim. _Swallow_."

 

He did, and made an unearthly wrenching noise as it went down.

 

"Chew first."

 

"I'm kinda surprised," Jim blurted out.

 

Spock cocked his head. "Surprised?"

 

"Yeah. I mean," he waved his fork; a piece of pepper went sailing joyfully across the room and slapped Spock's rubber plant, "I know I pushed for you two to go out, but I didn't think you'd end up proper together-together. Serious-together. And shit."

 

"And shit?"

 

"Yeah," he jabbed the fork into Spock's kneecap. "Like all loved up and disgusting and having anniversaries and shit. You know he keeps a picture of you in his wallet?"

 

"I had suspected."

 

" _And_ you're the most-used contact on his phone."

 

"Yes."

 

" _And_ he tapes you and sells it on the internet."

 

"Jim."

 

"Okay, okay. He _probably_ doesn't. I'd've found it," Jim shrugged. "But he's, like, proper suckered for you. And I didn't see it coming."

 

"I did," Spock raised an eyebrow. "And if I did..."

 

"Okay, maybe...but not back then! I just thought it'd be funny," Jim pointed out. "Get the pair of you to have a sex life and back to normal. He's a grumpy fucker, and you don't - didn't - fuck at all, apart from that one time, and I figured if you jumped back in the saddle, it'd all get back on track."

 

"It did."

 

"Just not how I expected," Jim said.

 

"What is your point, Jim?"

 

"It's weird."

 

Spock felt both eyebrows greeting his hairline.

 

"Not bad weird, just weird weird," Jim said. "My best friends are fucking. And dating."

 

"You possibly should have thought about this two years ago."

 

"I dunno, man," Jim shrugged. "I wouldn't change what I did. You're both better for it. Well, I think. Bones still throws things at me."

 

"I cannot _imagine_ why."

 

Jim scowled, and flicked some chicken at him. Spock ducked; it hit the lamp behind him.

 

"Bastard," he said. "So you're dumping this place and moving in with the grumpiest motherfucker in California."

 

"Apparently so."

 

"Huh. Well. S'a step up from Ginger."

 

" _Jim_."

 

"He was ginger!"

 

"That isn't important."

 

Jim leered. "Oh yes it is. Am I right, by the way? Is Bones manic in bed?"

 

"I am not having that discussion with you."

 

"I bet he is. He bites and everything."

 

Spock rolled his eyes.

 

"You know, we're going to have to conduct our little affair more carefully now you're going to be living over the road," Jim waggled his eyebrows. It looked vaguely like two caterpillars suffering from epilepsy when he did that. "He might come home early from work, or forget his keys, or..."

 

"Whatever you and I do in your fantasy life," Spock said, batting aside Jim's wandering fork, "is none of my concern."

 

"Shame," Jim grinned. "One day I'll talk you round."

 

"And on that day, I will pack my belongings and return to Sendai. For psychiatric treatment."

 

Jim pouted. "Bastard. And leave my heart broken forever by your cruelty?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Why am I friends with you?"

 

"I have absolutely no idea, Jim," Spock replied serenely. "You started this; it is your problem."

 

"True, but it's an awesome problem," Jim smirked. "Are you gonna take your rubber plant?"

 

"Probably not."

 

"Can I have it?"

 

"Now that it has crossbred with your pepper, you may."

 

"Rubber-pepper," Jim said thoughtfully. "Repper? Pubber? Pubber sounds better."

 

"It sounds marginally alcoholic," Spock said. "I will not be moving until the end of August."

 

"House party!"

 

" _No_."

 

"But _Spock_..."

 

"It is Leonard's house, and I doubt..."

 

"It'll be yours too."

 

"Hardly."

 

"Yeah it will," Jim thumped his knee again. "What, is he not letting you pay bills or something?"

 

"He is resistant to the idea."

 

"Well I wouldn't let you pay bills either."

 

" _Jim_."

 

"Just _sayin'_ ," Jim said. "I can't blame him is all."

 

"Thankfully, it is not your decision."

 

"Just _your_ pride."

 

"Says the man," Spock said pointedly, "who returns his mother's cheques every Christmas."

 

Jim scowled. "Low blow."

 

"But a true one," Spock rose to put the empty plates away, swiping Jim's fork with practised ease. "If you wish to side with Leonard on this one, then you may, but you will not win."

 

"You can't beat me."

 

"Jim," Spock said pointedly. "I have spent _years_ beating you."

 

Jim scowled. "Not this time. I know Bones on the warpath. He always wins."

 

Spock thought privately of the inhalers in his bedside drawer, and had to concede at least a few battles. "Not always."

 

"He may lose the battle, but he never loses the war," Jim said loftily. "Trust me, I know. You're going to spend an eternity of domesticated bliss losing wars. I hope you know that."

 

"I am aware of your delusions, yes."

 

Jim punched his knee again. He would leave bruises at this rate, but that was nothing new.

 

"On a more serious note," Jim said, "congrats, man. And even though he's my buddy too, if he's a dick like Gingerballs..."

 

" _Jim_!"

 

"...then I get best friend duty of macing his face for you."

 

Spock thought that, despite McCoy's relative age and physical fitness to Jim, Jim would likely be violently rebuffed in any attempt to do so. McCoy was not exactly soft around the edges.

 

"I appreciate the sentiment," he said slowly, "but I would prefer if you exercise _wisdom_ and did not offer Leonard the opportunity to destroy you."

 

"He couldn't."

 

"I remain sceptical."

 

"Traitor," Jim said easily. "Seriously, though. I'm happy for you."

 

"Thank you."

 

"And I'll get to see you more."

 

"There are disadvantages to moving, I will admit..."

 

Jim folded up a long leg to poke socked toes at Spock's shin. "Do you just hate me? Am I just here for your entertainment?"

 

"Not merely. I believe the concept of looking good by comparison to one's acquaintances also applies."

 

Jim snorted and shifted bodily to fling an arm around Spock's shoulders and squeeze, leaving them uncomfortably bent together on the couch. "Yeah, yeah. I'm the best damn thing you've ever seen, and you know it. You'd be _lost_ without me."

 

"Perhaps," Spock allowed, wrapping his fingers around Jim's bicep and pressing lightly. Jim's face twisted into an embarrassed, soft kind of expression, and he buried his face briefly into Spock's shoulder in the act of simultaneously expressing and hiding his emotions.

 

"Fuck, Spock, it's good to see you."

 

"What?"

 

" _You_ ," Jim reiterated, not that it helped. "You've been...I always knew something was up, that McFuckwit screwed you over, and sometimes you were really you but then you'd disappear again behind all that loneliness and I-don't-need-anybody shit, but...since Bones, it's like you're back. It's like I get you all the time, how you're really supposed to be, and I've missed that, man. I've missed you."

 

Spock attempted to disengage, but Jim was fierce about clinging and hiding his face when he got emotional. It could have been the booze - after all, he had definitely had one or two before arriving - but then occasionally Jim was prone to almost random bursts of deep emotional expression. Often, Spock could do little else but what he did now - sit back and allow the verbal diarrhoea to run its course.

 

"And he's still a grumpy fucker with no sense of humour but he's happier with you around, even if he'd rather cut off his arm than admit it, and - I swear to God, Spock, if either of you ever screw this up, I'm gonna staple-gun your faces together and lock you in a room until you sort it out."

 

Spock blinked. The sentiment was...odd, and the language even more odd. He took a moment to attempt to understand it, and Jim hung on patiently. In the end, Spock settled for merely squeezing his bicep again and hoping that would suffice as an answer.

 

"Also," Jim said eventually, untangling himself and punching Spock in the shoulder in that odd manner American men insisted upon, "I made a bet with Gaila last week that you'd last at least five years. I have two hundred dollars on it."

 

Spock rolled his eyes, and gave in - for once - to the urge to punch Jim back.


	5. Arc Two, Part Five

Some supposedly morale-boosting tannoy was ironically bleating some song about the wonders of New York as Spock plucked his bag from the conveyer and turned seamlessly towards the exit. Thanks to Dr. Noel's maternity leave, April had sent him to the annual conference in her stead, and Spock was in two minds about it. Drug manufacturing was not only not his specialism, but actively bored him, and so he was not looking forward to a week of talks on a supremely dull subject. But on the other hand, in New York was...

 

He passed into the arrivals area, and her smile lit up the lobby.

 

She hadn't changed much, to look at; she swept across the gleaming tiles with all the fluid grace of a dancer, flowing rather than walking, and she smelled of lemon shower gel and the faint scent of the rose that had always adorned her dorm room at college. One of her earrings, a cool hard thing, pressed into his cheek when she reached to embrace him, her hands still that odd dichotomy of smooth and elegant, yet firm and unyielding when she held on. And he could feel her smile where their faces touched, and felt the sharp pain of having missed her terribly.

 

"I'm surprised your Leonard let you get away for a whole week," she teased when she released him.

 

"He may not be aware of our former status."

 

She smiled and shook her head, tucking her arm through his as they passed into the encroaching night. She had brought her beaten-up old car to collect him; she had had the same car in college, although it had been in a far better condition, and it took three attempts to get the passenger door to close.

 

"You need to replace this."

 

"I can't replace Jenny," she sniffed. "This car's seen me through everything. Enough small talk. I want to hear all about this Len of yours."

 

"You _have_ heard..."

 

"No," she interrupted firmly. "I've heard over the phone and in your emails, where you can keep your secrets. I've made some chilli, and I'm going to lock you in my apartment and force all the juicy details out of you."

 

"Such as?" she ran a red light, and Spock winced.

 

"Everything," she said offhandedly. "I have to make sure you've made the right decision."

 

"Why does everyone seem to think I am incapable?" he asked peevishly, and Nyota tutted.

 

"Because your taste in women might be second to none," she preened briefly, "but your taste in men is terrible."

 

"Not in this instance."

 

"I'll be the judge of that," she said, running _another_ light. Spock sifted through his memory to see if he could recall who'd taught Nyota to drive. "A girl always knows best when it comes to these things, Spock."

 

"I seem to recall a girlfriend who firmly believed she knew best."

 

"Because I always do," she shrugged. "One day you'll learn, Spock. I _always_ know best."

 

Perhaps, but she was still speeding.

 

*

 

The party was winding down by the time McCoy pulled up outside the community centre. Harried mothers were collecting their chocolate-covered offspring, and McCoy's former brother-in-law gave him a tired grunt around a cigarette and said, "I'm never having kids, man."

 

The world would thank him for it, McCoy thought, and slithered his way past a thirty-something mother being thoroughly taken in hand by her screaming six-year-old son. The remnants of the party looked like a bomb had exploded in the pink section of a major stationary company, and McCoy hadn't seen so many party hats since his first Christmas at college. He stole an abandoned slice of cake - Joss always baked Jo's birthday cake herself, and even if Joss didn't like cooking, she made a mean chocolate sponge - on his amble through the hired hall and out into the sunlit back yard, where the bouncy castle stood, its owners waiting for the last of the littlies to be shepherded off to their own homes, and his own six-year-old stood in her favourite lemon-yellow party dress that made her look like a stunted scarecrow.

 

" _Daddy_!" she shrieked, and launched off the castle like a cannonball; he lunged and caught her mid-air, swinging her around in a full circle once before letting her attach herself to his neck and squeal her delight into his ear.

 

"Good God, you're a lump. And _huge_. What's Mommy been feeding you?"

 

"Cake!" she clung, giggling, and locked her legs around his waist. "Gramma said you wouldn't come 'cause you're irre- irry- not respons'ble, but I told her you would 'cause you always do and you're my Daddy and it's not allowed for you not to come."

 

"And what's Gramma?"

 

"An old bat!"

 

"That's my girl," he grinned, tossing her quite literally onto the bouncy castle again. She squealed, bounced twice, and relaunched for a second cuddle. This time, he hefted her up onto his hip properly and said, "I found this box in my car this morning all wrapped up in paper with your name on it."

 

"Issit for me?"

 

"Well, do you know other Joannas?"

 

" _Jo_!"

 

"Maybe it said Josephine, the handwriting was _awful_ ," he teased.

 

"No, it said Jo!"

 

"What? Joss? No, it can't be for Joss, it's not her birthday until October."

 

"It said _Jo_!" she hollered, and pulled his hair. "Daddy, you're being silly."

 

"Am I?"

 

"As always," Joss's voice drifted from the doorway to the hall, and he turned to her tired smile. "Thirty kids, Len. _Thirty_. Thank God we only had the one. I need a drink."

 

"Daddy brought me a present!" Jo informed her ignorant mother. It was important that everyone be told, obviously. "And he said Gramma's an old bat!"

 

"Well, as long as you don't call Grandma an old bat to her face again."

 

"She didn't," McCoy fought the grin, and lost.

 

"Oh, she did," Joss confirmed, and chuckled wearily. "I still haven't heard the last of that. I'll just be another fifteen minutes getting this cleared and then we'll be ready to go."

 

It was the same way each birthday since the divorce: Joss would handle the birthday party itself, and McCoy would arrive near the end to take the two of them out wherever they had decided to go, and they could play at being a proper family for an evening. Jo loved getting both of them to herself for a while, and McCoy relished the opportunity to feel like a proper, normal father just out for the evening with his wife and kid. The way he'd intended to be, in the beginning.

 

Still, getting to miss the actual nightmare of hosting a children's birthday party was good too. Jo insisted on digging out the bright purple glittery soccer ball that Aunt Jodie had sent from Portland and having a kick-about in the hall, the oddest soccer player in the world in her socks and yellow dress. The chaos was dwindling: the woman by the door still hadn't wrested control from her six-year-old, a pair of identical twins were howling at their own mother's attempts to get them to put their shoes on, and one tiny stick of a mother was struggling under the weight of her obese, obliviously asleep offspring as she tottered towards the door in her fashionable heels. And McCoy's contribution was to keep Jo happy while Joss dealt with the aftermath. He could do that.

 

"Why isn't Jim here?" Jo pouted when McCoy blocked her attempt at 'goal' (an upturned table). "He'd let me win!"

 

"He doesn't let you win, Jo, he's just awful."

 

She giggled, and prodded his thigh. "That's mean. Why didn't he come?"

 

"He had to work today, honey," McCoy retrieved the ball and passed it to her lightly. "But he's promised to come out with us next weekend and you can kick his backside back to Iowa then. What's Iowa?"

 

"Idiots out walking around," she recited gleefully. "Is Jim an idiot?"

 

"He sure is."

 

"Does he know?"

 

"Why wouldn't he know?"

 

"'Cause idiots are stupid, Mommy said so, so if he's stupid, he might not know he's stupid."

 

McCoy blinked. That was impressive logic for a six-year-old. Maybe he should think about paying more into her trust fund.

 

"I'm pretty sure he knows, JoJo," he said, trapping the ball and amusing himself by watching her try to free it from between his feet for five minutes. "Everyone makes sure he knows."

 

"It's not nice to call people stupid, Jo," Joss said, breezing her way over with Jo's sneakers and her own handbag and jacket.

 

"Daddy does it!"

 

"And Daddy's mean, as you're so fond of pointing out. You ready to go out for dinner?"

 

"Pizza!" she crowed gleefully, and graciously allowed her mother to work her feet into those shapeless shoes. The minute she was ready, she whirled and reached for McCoy to pick her up. McCoy privately thought Joss's old bat of a mother must have had her semi-convinced he wouldn't show up; she wasn't usually this clingy anymore. Still, he hefted her up and received a customary Eskimo kiss before she settled in pulling on his ear and trying to work out where 'the hearing bit' was. He left her to it; she'd always been a ridiculously curious kid.

 

"Never again," Joss swore as they stepped out to the parking lot. "I'm never doing it again."

 

She said it every year, but she always did it again.

 

"Daddy," Jo said as McCoy dumped her in the back seat. "Mommy has a date next week."

 

Joss flushed. She always looked like she'd caught fire when she blushed, and she didn't so much go pink as go magenta.

 

"It's just dinner," she said defensively, getting gracefully into the passenger seat. "Jo doesn't like him," she added under her breath as McCoy put the car in gear, and he smirked.

 

"I know the feeling," he said. "I don't think she's going to like Spock very much either."

 

"She hasn't met him yet?" Jo was thankfully preoccupied with the new picture book that Jack had given her, full of gorily-drawn pictures of human insides, and ignored her gossiping parents blissfully.

 

"Not yet," McCoy said. "Didn't want her getting attached to transients, wasn't that it?"

 

Joss went red again. "Len. I just..."

 

"I know," McCoy interrupted. He didn't want to start an argument on Jo's birthday.

 

"You're still serious, then?" Joss asked after a pause.

 

"Yeah. He's moving in with me at the end of the summer," McCoy confessed, glancing at the still-obsessed Jo in the rear view mirror. "I'll probably introduce them in the next couple of weekends. Hey. Joanna."

 

"Mommy, tell Daddy to shut up."

 

"Jo!" Joss scolded.

 

Jo scowled and said, " _What_?" in a manner that sounded more like a sixteen-year-old than a six-year-old.

 

"I _was_ gonna ask if you wanted to go through the park to Pizza Palace, but if you're going to..."

 

"Park!" she squealed, abandoning her book in glee. "Park, Daddy, park! Y'gotta _turn_!"

 

"Apologise," Joss insisted.

 

"M' _sorry_." Joss could scold, but McCoy remembered her at seventeen uttering exactly the same begrudging apology to her old man when she'd said something rude again. Jo wouldn't grow out of it so long as Joss was her mother, and McCoy refused to get involved in _that_ hopeless battle. He turned into the parking lot for the park, and winced when Jo squealed in jubilant victory.

 

"Where is he, then? Don't you usually spend your free weekends with him?" Joss prodded as they got out, and she released Jo from the child locked door.

 

"Usually, but he's in New York until next Thursday," McCoy shrugged. "Anyway, we're not joined at the hip. We go our own ways."

 

"Like you and I, then."

 

"Couples joined at the hip are _creepy_ ," McCoy grumbled, and Joss actually laughed as Jo bounded ahead of them and tried to catch a squirrel. It was like having a dog, not a daughter, and McCoy suddenly felt simultaneously very young, walking through a darkening park with a beautiful woman, and very old, that the squalling baby who woke them up at three in the morning was suddenly reading and wearing sneakers on the wrong feet and telling her carers to shut up.

 

Things had changed; he stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and found that he didn't mind so much as he used to any more.


	6. Arc Two, Part Six

They spent the weekend inside.

 

Nyota lived in a top-floor apartment in Manhattan that was miniscule, but stylish and immaculately kept, with matching furniture and stark lines over fluffy curves. Her couches didn't have spare cushions or throws scattered on them; her coffee table was clear and clean - she did not, and had never done, _clutter_.

 

It was odd, how familiar her living space was.

 

Spock had never been to her New York apartment before. The last two times they had come together had been in San Francisco, and the time before a weekend in London, apparently to cheer him up after he and Neil had parted ways. Nyota didn't do clutter, and Nyota didn't take no for an answer.

 

The apartment was not wholly impersonal, however; there were neatly framed photographs on every wall, in places hiding the paintwork altogether, from that formal photograph of her parents' wedding in Addis Ababa that he had seen before, to a holiday photograph of Nyota and a fair-haired young woman that he didn't know, a beach splayed out in the distance beyond them.

 

His own image was kept in the hall, but he ignored them.

 

Nyota herself was not so tidy of a morning, he woke on her narrow couch on Sunday morning to see her through the open kitchen doorway, cobbling together breakfast and yawning around her hand. She still had that powder-blue sleep-shirt, and her long legs were on unashamed display. Not that, Spock thought privately, any part of Nyota Uhura's body was to be ashamed of.

 

She brought him whole-wheat toast, dry, without having to be asked, and sat on his feet when he tried to sit up and make something of dignity.

 

"It's Sunday," she said around a mouthful of toast. "Let's just laze about like we used to."

 

It had always been the most surprising part of her. She was so permanently well put-together that his first glimpse of the lazy, hedonistic young woman who preferred dozing all Sunday morning in bed to getting up and attacking life with her usual vigour had been nothing less than a shock. Now, it was pleasantly familiar - almost nostalgic.

 

He lifted an arm, and she wriggled up to perch on the couch beside his ribs and tuck his arm around her tiny waist. She was still overly warm from sleep; she smelled of _her_ , and when she poked another crust of toast into his mouth, he offered her a small smile.

 

"I've missed you too," she agreed.

 

Spock had never felt comfortable, physically speaking, with people. Spoken language was confusing enough; body language was worse, and he had always avoided it. Even with T'Pring, he had never truly _relaxed_.

 

Nyota had been different, and even after they had separated, that had not changed. If there was anyone besides McCoy that he could understand without a word passing between them, it was her.

 

If this was how Jim felt with all his friends, then perhaps Spock could not blame him for his excessive tactility.

 

Unbidden, a memory of last Christmas came to the front of his mind - Jocelyn Merrick, Leonard's redheaded ex-wife, dropping off their daughter for New Year with her father. Spock had seen the way that McCoy still looked at her, and had - he had not voiced a concern, he was still certain, but McCoy had picked up on his disquiet all the same.

 

"She's the first girl I ever really loved," he said, shrugging. "That doesn't go away. Part of me still loves her."

 

Lying half-asleep on Nyota's couch, with his arm across her trim thighs and tiny waist, watching her shred toast in that almost violent manner she had of eating dry foods, Spock thought perhaps that he knew that feeling too.

 

*

 

"So."

 

He stiffened, and she smirked. He should have known that the easy reprieve wasn't going to last.

 

" _So_ ," she pushed the lid of his laptop closed and dropped down onto the couch beside him. She had been cleaning; he had been working. Apparently, she was done. "Tell me all about Len."

 

"Leonard."

 

She shrugged. "So. What's he like?"

 

"I have told you."

 

"So tell me again," she said, propping her chin on her hand. She was still dressed in just her sleep shirt and underwear. "Tell me something that you like about what he does."

 

"Sexually or otherwise?"

 

She shrugged. "Whichever."

 

He narrowed his eyes. Nyota had a gift for _people_ , the exact opposite to himself. Her perception often meant people presumed her degree was in psychology or something similar, and he sensed a trap.

 

But then, if Nyota wished to trap him, then he was good as caught. Perhaps it would simply be easier to play her game.

 

"He does not insist on watching endless hours of baseball."

 

Nyota grinned and took the jab for what it was. "Alright, alright. And something he does that you don't like?"

 

Spock placed his laptop carefully on the coffee table and drew his feet up to sit cross-legged. "He insists on bacon and eggs on Saturday mornings, even in my apartment."

 

She brought up her other hand to cup her chin in both, like a child hearing a secret. "When was your last date?"

 

"Friday evening. We went out for dinner."

 

"Who paid?"

 

"He did."

 

"Why?"

 

She was definitely reading something in his answers, but Spock opted not to retaliate. "Because he insisted."

 

"So?"

 

"I have learned to pick my battles with Leonard. The check is not worth it. Regardless," Spock shrugged, "he _does_ earn more than I do."

 

Her mouth twitched, but she held her tongue and instead asked, "Did he spend the night?"

 

"No. I had to be at the airport too early."

 

"So - did he drop you off, or...?"

 

"He drove me back in the car, and walked me to the entrance."

 

"And?"

 

"And nothing."

 

"There's an and," Nyota objected. "I can see it. Did he kiss you at the door?"

 

"Yes," Spock admitted.

 

"Did he try for more?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Did he get it?"

 

" _No_."

 

She grinned that wide, full smile that said she knew something he didn't - or at least, she knew something that he didn't want her to know.

 

"Where are you going with this?" he enquired.

 

"In a minute," she said. "When you have sex - is it sex?"

 

"...What else could it be?"

 

"What does he call it?"

 

Spock stared at her, bewildered, and she sighed.

 

"What does he _call_ it, Spock? Does he say 'having sex', or 'making love', or..."

 

"He alternates."

 

"Between what and what?"

 

"Sex and fucking," Spock said flatly, and the vulgarity was so surprising - and so matter-of-fact - coming from his mouth that Nyota laughed without quite meaning to.

 

"So he's straight, then?"

 

"I rather doubt that," Spock raised an eyebrow.

 

"I mean," Nyota said, "that he's not a subscriber to gay _culture_. That the only gay thing about him is _you_. That nobody would guess that he wasn't one hundred percent heterosexual."

 

"You have seen photographs of him."

 

"A picture's not like a man in person," she objected. "You lose - well, I know you don't notice it so much, but I do. It can be a great picture but it's not the same as seeing someone face-to-face, and I've never seen him."

 

"Nyota, where are you going with this?" he repeated.

 

"I know what he sees in you," Nyota said. "I _know_ , Spock. I know exactly what you look like to the untrained eye, and I know just what you're like when you let somebody in, but I don't know what _you_ see in _him_."

 

"I could have told you."

 

"You just did."

 

Spock raised an eyebrow, and motioned for her to carry on. She laughed and shook her head, leaning back on the arm of the couch to eye him appraisingly.

 

"You have this guy - this _guy_ \- who runs roughshod over your beliefs and on social convention whenever it suits him, who takes control and won't let you have it back, and who you have to push against for every inch you've got. He's not very vocal with you, but he's pretty physical, and - Spock, that's all back-to-front for you. You've always done verbal and _definitely_ not physical. He's completely the wrong way around, but you love him, and it's not _anyway_ , it's _because_."

 

She paused, cocked her head, and the smile softened into something sweet and understanding.

 

"I think you found what you were looking for, and it wasn't where you expected it to be."

 

How she had drawn her conclusions was beyond him, but he could not deny their validity. McCoy _was_ unlike any of his previous partners; he was even unlike anyone he had claimed to be a friend, and that oddity should, under normal circumstances, have been off-putting. But then, they weren't normal circumstances.

 

"Perhaps," he allowed, and she rolled her eyes.

 

"You know I'm right," she said snippily, before her tone softened again. "It's serious, isn't it? It's not like it was with Neil. He's really got you."

 

"Yes," he admitted.

 

"You love him."

 

She wasn't asking; Spock eyed her, and felt a wash of affection for this brilliant, beautiful woman that he had the honour of calling a friend.

 

"Yes," he said. "Though," he added, "I would thank you not to tell him. His ego does not need further inflation."

 

She grinned, taking his hands and squeezing.

 

"Our secret," she promised - though it wasn't.

 

He knew it wasn't.


	7. Arc Two, Part Seven

If Spock were prone to ignoring his surroundings, as so many did, he would never have noticed and would have turned towards the fleets of cabs waiting in the dying sunlight without being any the wiser - but he was not, so he noticed the dark smear of a familiar American leaning on the pillar, mouth creased in a half-smirk and stubble stark against his jaw this late in the day.

 

"Evenin'," McCoy drawled as Spock nearest, and refused to move an inch in a manner that was somehow simultaneously attractive and annoying. "How was your flight?"

 

"Uneventful."

 

"That's a good thing, thirty thousand feet up," McCoy grunted, eyeing Spock from head to toe in blatant appraisal. "You got plans that start any time before tomorrow evening?"

 

"No," Spock said honestly. He had to compile the usual array of reports for April and Pike regarding the content, relevance, and prospects of the conference, but...they could wait, perhaps. "Do you?"

 

"I do now," McCoy said cryptically, peeling himself from the pillar in an undulation that brought his hips free first, and his shoulders last. Spock did _not_ catch his breath. "C'mon," McCoy smirked, jerking his head towards the short-stay exit. "I'm stealin' you for the night."

 

"I said that I had no plans, not that I was open to being stolen," Spock said, though he kept pace regardless.

 

"And that right there is why it's called _stealing_ ," McCoy snorted.

 

"To steal something, the item being stolen must belong to another whom you are depriving of it," Spock replied smoothly. "I have no owner; you cannot steal me."

 

"Huh," McCoy frowned, fumbling for his keys. "I guess you're right - it's pretty hard to steal from yourself."

 

Spock resisted the urge to scowl at him; judging by the flash of humour in his eyes as he unlocked the car, McCoy knew that he'd been interpreted correctly, and didn't - as he put it - give a damn.

 

"You do not own me," he said waspishly, putting his bag into the trunk with unnecessary force.

 

"Yeah, Spock, I kinda do," McCoy corrected genially. "Just get in and shut the hell up. I got Texan chilli in the oven, fresh sheets on the bed, and somethin' to show you."

 

"I have seen it multiple times."

 

"Not _that_ ," McCoy rolled his eyes, almost throwing the car into reverse. "Somethin' _new_ to show you."

 

"There is more?"

 

"Goddamn, you really go into sarcastic asshole mode after a flight, don't you?"

 

"I had become used to being appreciated," Spock sniped.

 

"Hey, I appreciate you," McCoy protested. "Your ass, your chest, your abs. Personality could use a bit of work, but physically..."

 

Spock switched on the radio to drown him out. McCoy snickered, chalked it up to winning the argument, and let him subside. Spock didn't much like closed, crowded environments, and he was willing to bet the flight had ruffled his foreign feathers more than he was admitting.

 

Halfway home, he reached over to squeeze Spock's thigh softly; the man stirred, half-asleep against the window, and brushed his fingers lightly against McCoy's.

 

McCoy smiled, and kept driving.

 

*

 

It was fully dark by the time McCoy pulled up in the driveway. A pale-coloured cat shot out from under the narrow porch and darted away across the lawn; Spock shifted against the door and switched the radio off as though he had never fallen asleep at all.

 

"You're all wiped out, huh?"

 

"Nyota can be demanding."

 

"Not sure you should be telling me that about your ex, Spock," McCoy pointed out, managing to swing himself out of the car and retrieve Spock's bag from the trunk before Spock could do so much as release the catch on his seatbelt. "C'mon. The new thing is inside."

 

Spock gave him a look that was dubious even in the faint, sickly glow of the porch light, and McCoy rolled his eyes.

 

"Always the sceptic," he muttered, jamming his key in the lock and pausing long enough to reel Spock in by the jacket and kiss him soundly. He tasted of flat in-flight lemonade, spearmints and sleep; his lashes brushed against McCoy's cheek like ghosts when he pushed into the attention. "Mm. That close enough to appreciation for you?"

 

"It is...getting there," Spock allowed.

 

McCoy grinned, unlocking the door and flinging it back with gusto. "How about that?"

 

The real plus side - if there was any - of Spock's keen attention to detail was that he noticed the change immediately; the downside of his communication issues - the autism or whatever it was - meant that his response wasn't so obvious so fast, until he said, " _Leonard_ ," with that too-familiar exasperated tone.

 

"Don't even think about it," McCoy interrupted before he could get going.

 

"But..." Spock stared at the brand-new boards that had replaced the carpet on the stairs, and McCoy snorted.

 

"Nope," he said. "Not a single damn protest outta you. I'm not having you living here with those damn carpets everywhere. The point is to be able to actually do things together, not lock you in the kitchen with your medication and an oxygen tank."

 

Spock's mouth twitched; he toed off his shoes and shed his jacket, before glancing up the stairs and saying, "Surely you cannot have replaced everything?"

 

"Living room and Jo's room are still carpeted," McCoy said, "and I got a new one laid for the landing. Hypoallergenic, like at that bed and breakfast at Clearlake. You were okay with that."

 

Spock pulled himself away and padded slowly up the fresh boards. They had only gone down yesterday; McCoy had spent all morning with the vacuum cleaner trying to get rid of every last speck of dirt, dust and grime. He hadn't minded much; he was going to have to get into the habit when Spock moved in for good.

 

At the top of the stairs, Spock clenched his socked toes in the fresh carpet - the same colour as the old, but firmer to the touch, and with the bounce of newness that had been downtrodden out of the old - and turned to watch McCoy follow him up.

 

"Well?" McCoy prompted.

 

Spock searched for words, and came up empty - instead, he resorted to a reliable secondary means of communication with the American, and kissed him.

 

McCoy met it without question or hesitation; he deepened it in seconds, a proprietary hand slipping into the small of Spock's back, inching under his shirt moments later to press them skin-to-skin, his fingers shockingly warm after the chill of the night outside. His stubble was rough where Spock slid his fingers past it to the crux of his jaw and neck; his pulse thumped under his throat, quickening when Spock's hand slipped past, and then Spock could feel the taut catch of a held breath in his chest, before McCoy pressed too close and forced Spock's fingers to slide free over his shoulders and biceps. He still wore his jacket; it was chilly to the touch, and Spock pushed it free, McCoy's hand disappearing long enough to let the fabric hit the floor before his hot fingers were back, pressing into the skin over his kidneys and lower spine, hard enough to feel every ridge and whorl in his palms.

 

As though losing the jacket had triggered something, McCoy allowed perhaps a moment's peace before pressing forward, using his body to move Spock towards the bedroom door. His hands never moved; Spock left them alone, alternating his own between stroking through McCoy's hair and inching the left up under McCoy's t-shirt. He was warm there, too; another pulse point was beginning to hammer under the fluid muscles of his back, and Spock rubbed the pads of his fingers over the skin as though hunting for marks or blemishes. And all the while, their lips never parted more than half an inch - a mere half-inch to breathe before meeting again, in utterly mindless kissing.

 

Spock's knees hit the side of the bed; he slid into the centre of the sheets almost gracefully, with the blind guidance of McCoy's hot hands and the anchorage of his mouth, and then he was weighed down by the heavy heat of a body over his, matching line-for-line, as McCoy settled over him smoothly, locking his palms over Spock's kidneys again and stopping, dense and implaceable in his single-minded devotion to where - and when, and how - their lips met. When urged, he disengaged long enough to shed his t-shirt, and reattached before Spock even had the chance to look at his bare chest.

 

His bared skin, even only available to the sense of touch, was hot - and no longer alone, as Spock felt his body begin to react properly to the available stimuli. The run of McCoy's spine was vague under the solid muscle of his back; his biceps were taut from holding what little of his weight he hadn't dropped onto Spock, and Spock plucked and teased at the lines of muscle and bone until McCoy finally pushed up on his knees and allowed for a little more access to his chest, still refusing to have their mouths parted for long. And yet...

 

A moment later, one of those implaceable hands slid around Spock's side to his stomach, and then the buttons of his shirt were being teased apart with one hand, warm knuckles brushing his chest hair as they progressed, and then McCoy wrapped both hands around his back and managed to lift him just far enough to allow the shirt to be entirely discarded. The clutching grip was a little more heated, a little more feral - and yet the kissing was never disturbed from its slow, exploratory _intent_. For all the heat, for all the obvious purpose in the movements of their hands, the steady pressure of McCoy's weight kept him anchored, and the plucking grip of his mouth over Spock's was ever-slow, ever-rhythmic, ever-calm.

 

They never divested themselves of the rest of their clothing; McCoy was too unwilling, it seemed, to forego the kissing; Spock was too contented with that decision, and too free in it to let his hands wander and explore vast expanses of McCoy's skin as though it were the first time all over again, still as brilliantly expectant, and yet with the guarantee of having that attachment behind it that he had been uncertain of the first time around. Now, he knew; now, he simply sighed at the first gentle, rolling thrust that McCoy rocked down into his hip, and had the sigh stolen by another long, low kiss that parted with a damp pluck like split plastic in the rain. Pinned under that slow yet powerful undulation, more rocking than true thrusting, their pants unbuttoned but not removed and hardly a touch below the waist, the build was slow and inexplicably _strong_.

               

McCoy came first; the shiver that ran up his spine under Spock's fingers, the stutter in that slow rhythm, and the long, low groan that sounded through his chest rather than his throat marked the boil in his blood, and with one convulsive clutch of his fingers around Spock's sides, he relaxed out of it like a tide sweeping in and washing out between one moment and the next. The sigh that passed from his mouth to Spock's was a long, self-satisfied thing like a whisper of summer air through water-bracketing willow trees, and Spock twisted his hip up into McCoy's, seeking the same tide and feeling the faint smile crease in the corner of McCoy's mouth.

 

"I gotcha," he breathed, the first words for a lifetime, and one of those wide, warm hands slid down and around to curl around the top of Spock's thigh where it flowed seamlessly into his buttock - and the sudden hard clench of _strength_ after such a languid peace was a sharp, brutal slap of arousal that had the tide rush in and sweep away - everything.

 

The white-out was brief, but absolute; when he gathered the pieces of his scattered psyche back together, it was to find himself entirely naked and being gathered under the sheets into those warms arms, their bare legs tangling loosely at the end of the bed in a strange parody of the self-satisfied afterglow that was distinctly clouding his thought processes.

 

"Thank you," he murmured, curling into the warmth and the very faint smell of McCoy's shower gel. He was offered a vague, half-asleep hum and another damp kiss being pushed into the hinge of his jaw.

 

He did not explain his thanks; for all his days, McCoy never asked.


	8. Arc Two, Part Eight

The first Friday in June that McCoy had to collect Jo from school was a groggily hot, but uncomfortably wet day. It was thinking about raining when he pulled up outside the box-shaped school that had been selected for her; when he stepped out, the first spatters of thick, warm drops burrowed into the back of his shirt, and he grimaced.

She was waiting by the main entrance in the shadow of the sign, scuffing her brand new sneakers on the gravel until they went grey, and didn't bounce up for a cuddle or a football tackle as per usual. Instead, she scowled at the floor, and thrust a slip of paper up at him.

"What'd you do?"

"Didn't do _nothin_ '," she grumped.

"Uh-huh," he unfolded it, and was crisply informed that Jo had taken exception to another little girl in her class and had punched her on the playground. "What'd Naomi do to you?"

"She took my crayons."

"Did you ask for them back?"

"Yeah, when I hit her."

"That's not how you ask for something back, Jo," he muttered, stuffing the paper in his jeans pocket. Joss'd have a cow; McCoy called it inevitable. Jo was hardly a delicate, retiring, wallflower of a child.

"She didn't even punch me back or nothin'," Jo said scornfully, taking his hand grudgingly. "She has an imag- imagin-..."

"Imaginary friend?"

"Yeah," Jo said. "She's crazy."

"Don't call people crazy, kiddo," McCoy said, unlocking the door and allowing her to clumsily heft herself up into the seat. "She's probably just lonely. Why don't you invite her to join in sometimes?"

"Because she's a scaredy-cat and crazy and a teacher's pet," Jo said firmly, managing to buckle herself in. When McCoy got into the driver's seat, she added, "Nobody likes Naomi."

"Her imaginary friend probably likes her."

"Nuh-uh."

McCoy rolled his eyes. Kids. Adults were harsh, but kids were downright nasty. He would bet a hundred dollars right now that if anybody in Jo's class ever grew up, snapped, and shot everyone in a grocery store, it would be this Naomi kid.

"What if nobody liked you? How would you feel?"

"Everybody likes me," Jo said flatly, and McCoy gave it up. She was only six; obnoxious stupidity was kind of expected at that age. "Daddy, what's this?"

He glanced in the rear view mirror. She was winding a long, dark blue tie around her wrists and stretching the fabric out of shape.

"It's a tie."

"I know that," she said scornfully. "But it's not yours. Yours aren't as soft."

Cheaper, she would learn, but McCoy decided not to inform her.

"It's Spock's," he said. Jo hadn't met him yet, but she'd gotten used to some of his things being in the house. She'd found a note he'd scribbled once in scratchy Japanese, and had decided that the symbols were weird, and Spock was obviously an alien. Luckily, the coolness of being an alien made up for the weird writing. Apparently.

"Why's it here?"

McCoy went red. He remembered tossing it into the back seat on Thursday night, before they'd gone up to Spock's apartment. Spock had obviously decided it was a fair trade: one tie for one fuck on his battered couch. Which had been decidedly more battered once they were done.

"He must have forgotten it," he fudged. "You'll have to meet him soon."

She abandoned the tie. "Don't want to."

"Well, you're gonna have to," he said, peeling into his street and slowing to avoid hitting a ginger cat that darted across the road. "I know you don't like the idea of me having someone else, but we're not going to run off to Alabama and have another family, kiddo."

She kicked the back of the seat in front of her, and scowled harder. Her forehead would crack if she kept it up. "I don't like him."

"You haven't met him."

"I still don't like him."

"Just give him a chance, Jo," McCoy said, mentally wincing. Ever since she'd figured out that 'the Spock Daddy dates' wasn't going away, she'd switched from a general ambivalence towards him into an outright dislike. And McCoy was no fool; he knew what she was thinking.

She said nothing until he pulled up in the driveway and opened the door to let her out; when she slid it out, she did so straight into his arms and clung, insisting to be picked up and carried into the house, trailing her far-too-long fair hair over his shoulder like an itchy curtain and digging hard little fingers into his shoulder when he tried to set her down.

"Don't _want_ him here," she mumbled, just to make it all the more difficult. "Don't _want_ you to have a new family."

"I'm not going to have a new family, Jo," he coaxed, managing to prise her off onto the couch and crouch down in front of her. "I have you, don't I? I don't need a new family."

"So why d'you need _him_?" she demanded.

He sighed, and went for the soft spot. "Because just like Naomi gets lonely without any friends, I get lonely without my family. You're not always here, Jo, you have to stay with Mom too. And then I get lonely, but when Spock's around, I don't feel lonely anymore."

Her mouth twisted and wriggled, and she blurted out, "I could stay here with you."

"And then Mom would get lonely," he said. "Look, Jo, just like you love both me and Mom, I love both you and Spock. It doesn't mean you're any less important to me just because I have a new partner."

She bit her lip. "But he'll come to all our weekends and he'll take you away and..."

"No he won't, sweetheart," McCoy coaxed. "I'll always have time for you. If you don't want him to come on our weekends, then that's fine. All I want you to do is stop worrying about him. He's here to stay, honey, and he's not going away, but that's not a bad thing. He's not some wicked stepmother out of those movies Mommy lets you watch."

She stuffed her index finger in her mouth. "But what if you have another baby?"

The downside of young kids came with an equal upside: "I think Spock's allergic to babies, kiddo." He probably was.

Jo giggled shakily, and reached for a cuddle. She smelled of overripe peaches, and the grape juice that Joss put in her school lunch. Her hair was scratchy, and her grip was too tight, and she was crushing her nose into his shoulder so his shirt was probably being used as a glorified tissue - but he wouldn't have let go for all the world.

* * *

He broke the news on Saturday morning.

He wasn't hopeful, truth be told. Jo hadn't taken her parents' divorce very well: she had been far too young to understand, too young to even really grasp that Daddy living somewhere else didn't mean Daddy was _gone_. She hadn't, thankfully, made the false conclusion that Daddy not loving Mommy any more meant Daddy didn't love _her_ anymore, and if it was one thing Joss still agreed with him on, it was that their little girl deserved both of them.

"I didn't have a kid to be a single mom, Len," Joss had said, all those years ago now, signing paper after paper. "I'm not having her ten years, twenty years down the line hatin' me 'cause she lost her daddy, or hatin' you 'cause we couldn't make _us_ work. I'm not doin' that."

But Jo had apparently made a different conclusion somewhere along the line: a family was made up of a mommy, a daddy, and the children, and nobody could be part of two families. If McCoy was her father, he couldn't be anyone else's.

And vice versa: if he found a new wife and had more children, he wouldn't be Jo's daddy anymore.

He knew it was going to take another year or so for Jo's brain to really get around that concept, which just made _telling_ her all the harder. So he bribed her: he took her to her favourite park, bought a double scoop of her favourite ice-cream, and even let her have a piggyback ride around the pond, though Joss had banned it as it had made her lazy and clingy after overuse. He even let her have a second chocolate bar in her lunch, finding a shady spot in the grass away from the students playing with a frisbee, and letting her settle in his lap like she was still three.

"Jo," he said as she crunched her way through the chocolate. She was having an everything-with-hazelnuts phase. It was disgusting. "I gotta tell you something."

"What kinda something?" she asked distractedly.

"Well, you know how I've been datin' Spock for a while now."

"Uh-huh."

"Well," he was fumbling for the words, and he knew it. And worse, she was staring at him, all set to do that stupid logic she had that inevitably led to a screwed up conclusion. "It's been long enough, and I like him enough, that he's going to move in with me."

Her face scrunched up. "Spock's gonna live in your house?"

"Yeah."

She paused, twisting the chocolate wrapper in her hands. "Do I hafta give up my room?"

"No," McCoy crushed the laugh. "No, sweetheart, he's gonna stay in my room with me. Like when I used to live with you and Mommy in the apartment, and Mommy and I stayed in the same room."

She twisted up her face harder. She didn't actually remember the apartment - she'd only been a toddler - but there had been a lot of family pictures taken in there, cataloguing everything from her first squinty-eyed glower at being brought home, to the waddling steps she'd been taking when Joss had asked him to leave.

"Oh," she said, and began to chew on her thumbnail. When he removed her hand from her mouth, she twisted a string of hair around it and fiddled instead. "Why?"

"Because that's what adults do when they're in relationships."

"But you don't stay in Mommy's room anymore," she pointed out.

This was heading for dangerous waters. "Because Mommy and I aren't in a relationship anymore, sweetheart," he tweaked her hair. "When we were, I did stay with her."

"So are you and Spock like you and Mommy was?"

"Were," he corrected. "I s'pose so."

"Did you not used to live with Mommy, then?"

The sudden tangent took him by surprise, but she was staring up at him with those big, wide eyes, and he covered it hastily with an, "Uh, no. No."

"When did you live with Mommy?"

"Um," he sifted for a point of reference. "When we came to San Francisco, honey. Not long before you were born."

She chewed her lip. "Did you live with Mommy because of me?"

"No," he stroked her hair. "Mommy came to live with me because I got a job and I could pay the rent, and we wanted to live together and have our own home. You came after that."

"So...is Spock moving in with you, and then next year you're gonna have a baby?"

McCoy just about choked. Jo jumped, startled, as he swallowed the laugh and coughed to cover it up - poorly, judging by the frown and head-tilt his little girl offered him in response. Like hell he was explaining that one.

"No," he said firmly. "He's moving in with me, and no baby. We're not having a baby, Jo, and we're never going to."

"But you said you're like you and Mommy!" she protested.

" _Like_ , Jo. We're not exactly the same," he said hastily. "For one, Mommy and I wanted a baby from the minute we lived together. Spock and I don't want a baby, so we're not going to have one."

He was _screwed_ when she got old enough to realise that he was fudging the truth. God, she was going to make the sex talk _hell_ when she was a few years older, and few shades sharper.

"Why not?"

He chuckled, thanking God for the reprieve that youth and stupidity offered, and hugged her close with one arm. She cuddled into his chest appreciatively. "I've got you. What do I want another baby for?"

She butted her head lightly against his breastbone. "Y'r not gonna have another family?"

"Nope," he said easily. "Even if I did, nothing could replace you. You're always gonna be my little girl, no matter what."

She plucked at the sleeve of his shirt thoughtfully for a while, then announced: "I don't hafta like him, do I?"

Well, McCoy supposed. That might have been too much to hope for.


	9. Arc Two, Part Nine

McCoy had long since stopped calling ahead to warn of his impending arrival - and in any case, the urge to drop by Spock's hit him on the way out of work, dodging fat raindrops from an ominous sky on his way to the car. He dropped by Spock's preferred pizza place, nearly drowned in getting the damn things, and huddled in the protective overhang of the building's roof as he depressed the buzzer.

Spock had gotten used to him, too; the door released, and he was waiting in the doorway of his apartment, arms folded across his chest, but face relaxed.

"Spur of the moment," McCoy explained, offering a kiss and a pizza box. "S'rainin' out there."

"A storm is starting," Spock replied. "Would you like a towel?"

"Sure."

The view from the main window was almost obscured by the gathering darkness of storm clouds; the rain splattered itself across the glass, and McCoy set up camp on the sofa, kicking off his shoes and using the offered towel to wipe the worst of the water from his hair. He didn't fail to notice the glance he earned when he stripped off his wet shirt and settled in.

"C'mere," he ordered, and Spock graciously curled into his side as they ate the pizzas, the grease and heat somehow hedonistic against the wind starting to hiss around the edges of the building. "Jesus. In for a loud night."

The first flash lit up the inside of the apartment like a firework; the answering rumble of thunder was close.

"Indeed," Spock muttered, drawing his feet up under himself. He was dressed in his nightclothes, the pants too long.

"You free this weekend?"

Spock eyed him. "For what purpose?"

"Just answer the damn question."

"...Possibly."

"Make it a yes," McCoy commanded, and that muscle tic in Spock's jaw went off. The one that said he desperately wanted to roll his eyes. "I have Jo this weekend, think it's time you met her."

Spock plucked at a corner of pizza thoughtfully. "I see."

"It's not going to be fun," McCoy predicted. "She's still convinced we're gonna have a baby and replace her."

Spock actually snorted, and McCoy grinned.

"What?" he asked. "You don't want to have my baby?"

"You are enough. Anything with your more dominant genes is quite possibly more than I can handle."

McCoy removed the pizza box, and hefted himself up to straddle Spock's lap and pin him to the back of the couch. "If you could clone me, you would."

"I would not," Spock replied tartly. "You are incorrigible, rude, exhausting and difficult. I am beginning to doubt the wisdom in moving in with you."

McCoy bit his ear. "Liar."

"Egotist."

"So why're you..."

The lights went out. Quite suddenly, they went out. The main light, the lamp left on in the bedroom - the orange streetlight outside, the faint glow under the front door from the strip lights in the stairwell, the glowing blue numbers from the DVD player...

"Well, damn," McCoy whistled. "Power's out."

Spock was telepathic; he could almost _hear_ the 'no shit' in his brain. A flash of lightning lit up the black apartment, and his eyes were unimpressed in the brief light.

"You know, that huge New York blackout a few years back caused a baby boom."

"Am I about to learn where Joanna came from?"

"Nah, that was alcohol," he dismissed evenly, licking at the soft spot under Spock's right ear. "Alcohol and me bein' too lazy to go to the store for more condoms. But a whole lotta New York babies were blackout babies."

"Your point?"

McCoy grinned, and squeezed the contents of Spock's jeans. "I'm gonna try my damnedest to put a baby in you. Get your pants off."

Spock huffed, and a tongue lashed down the side of McCoy's jaw as another flash of light split the room.

"Very well," he murmured. "But as I have no intention of getting pregnant, I'm afraid I _must_ insist on a condom."

But then he got a hand inside McCoy's pants, and they both forgot about the condom.

* * *

McCoy knew, from the moment that Jo appeared at the bottom of the stairs, that today wasn't going to go well.

For one, she was still in her pyjamas when he had told her to get dressed. For another, she had folded her arms over her chest in that I-am-going-to-be-obstinate way of hers. And she was scowling.

"I have a cold," she announced.

"No you don't, Jo. Get dressed."

"I have a cold," she insisted, and made an exceptionally unconvincing sneeze. "I can't go out."

"Oh really?" he bent to feel her forehead. "Hmm. Well. You're a bit warm..."

She visibly brightened.

"I'll have to prescribe the best cure," he said.

She hugged his knees.

"Fresh air," he finished, and caught her before she could dart away again. She shrieked in indignation as he hefted her up, and wailed all the way up the stairs. If she knew the word injustice, McCoy was fairly sure she'd be using it, and at the top of her lungs. As it was, she just shrieked 'unfair' in his ear about thirty times before he dropped her on her bed, kicked the door shut, and dropped a pair of jeans over her head. " _Dressed_ , Jo."

"I don't _wanna_ go!" she whined.

"Joanna. You can get dressed, or I can take you in your pyjamas and show everybody that you're a baby who can't dress herself yet."

She scowled at him. He scowled right back, until she deflated and dressed in the sulkiest manner possible. She didn't latch onto his hand as usual once she was ready, and scowled at him again when he collected his keys and shades from the hall table.

"I don't want to," she persisted as he hefted her into the car and buckled her in.

"Jo, you have to," he said firmly. "He's not some green-blooded alien monster, you know. He's a nice, normal person, and if you're real good, he might have change for ice cream."

The bribe fell flat; she huffed at him and turned her face away, not even offering her customary kiss before setting off. She had decided, obviously. McCoy just had to hope - fervently - that Spock wasn't prone to taking the opinions of snotty six-year-olds to heart.

* * *

Spock had found himself a bench in the sun near the playground upon which to wait, and he did not have to wait long. McCoy had been insistent that he meet Jo this weekend, and thought that doing so on neutral ground rather than in the house might generate a more positive response from the girl.

Spock was not so optimistic.

He could remember - faintly - the distance between his mother and her stepson. Sybok had not liked the change in his family, and while he had come around to the idea of a younger brother, he had never accepted Amanda as part of his own family. He had tolerated her, largely for the sake of familial peace, but he had not liked her.

Jo, if she was anything like her father, would have no such generous considerations for peace of any kind.

His suspicions on Jo's likeness to her father were confirmed as he watched the car pull into the small parking lot, and heard the battle from the bench. A little girl's shriek of denial, and the slamming of a car door.

And there she was, a...

Spock fought to think of something at least... _pleasant_...to observe, but it was difficult. In all honesty, there was a squirming lump of a girl with long limbs and longer hair wriggling at the end of McCoy's arm, quite literally digging her heels in and whining. As they approached, it became obvious that she didn't really look much like her father, but for the intense, dark scowl on her face, and the flash of indignant, impotent fury in her eyes.

"Stop it!" McCoy said sharply, not ten metres from him, and shook her by the shoulder. She stopped, glowered at Spock, and promptly hid behind her father's knees. "Jo, this is Spock. Come outta there and say hi."

She refused, and headbutted the back of his knee. McCoy groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose heavily.

"I'm sorry about this," he said to Spock. "She's bein' difficult."

"I see."

A fierce face glared at him briefly, and then disappeared again.

"Let her be," Spock advised, opting to ignore her. There was nothing to be gained from forcing any kind of conversation from the child. "If she is...difficult, then she is best let alone until she changes her behaviour."

McCoy raised his eyebrows, muttering a snarky request to see his child psychology degree, but unprised her and released her into the fenced wilds of the playground. It wasn't large, and within easy observable distance from the bench.

"I'm sorry," he apologised again, returning to lounge on the wood beside Spock. "She's jus' decided that you're not gonna be her favourite. Ever."

"She is only six."

"She's an obstinate six," McCoy returned tartly, eyeing Spock's serenity with a mixture of suspicion and relief. "We'll take lunch later. Food'll distract her and she might..."

"Leonard, do not push things," Spock said evenly. "She will get used to the idea, as long as she learns that I do not threaten her relationship with you. If it means that the first few times she visits after September I am otherwise occupied, then so be it."

McCoy grimaced. "I don't want to have to take that compromise," he insisted. "If she learns she can push you out..."

"She just needs time and reassurance," Spock reiterated. "Let her have it. She will have to get used to my presence in the house, and she will do so, in her own time."

McCoy eyed his daughter on the slide, who eyed him right back.

"That might be a long damn time."


	10. Arc Two, Part Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a new book out, Vivaldi in the Dark! A young adult novel dealing with bullying, depression, and first relationships against the backdrop of classical music. Check it out at my author page - it's currently available in both ebook and paper format. The sequel, The Devil's Trill Sonata, will be out in March, so be sure to catch up by then!
> 
> As celebration, I bring more fic. I'm sorry it's taken so long too. Real life has been going berserk since Mum died, and isn't even close to getting back on track. (In fact, I move house this month.) But here is some fic as an apology, a celebration, and - hopefully - a sign of recovery.
> 
> Enjoy, all!

July burst with borderline-Georgia levels of heat, though a drier shimmer than the wet weight of his sixteenth summer in Atlanta, when it had been so hot his bicycle tyres had melted into the asphalt in the parking lot at Walmart, and he'd had to call his momma to come and fetch him. It was the kind of heat McCoy _loved_ ; cold was a wet, miserable thing, frigid like a nun in a brothel, and he hated the wet for its inconvenience anyway. Heat was where it was at, wet or dry, and the moment the temperature soared, he had all the windows open, a deckchair in the garden, and finally got around to sorting out the weeds.

 

They'd kind of...taken over, since Spock had walked into his life, and that was a long damn time for weeds.

 

That first weekend, then, he booked the Sunday off entirely, and took the whole weekend for the garden, starting early on the Saturday morning. His garden wasn't big, by Georgia standards, but it was enormous by San Francisco standards: a rectangle of green space, the width of the house and twice as long, that had been a tidy lawn shaded by twin apple trees at the bottom. The only changes he had made were to string a hammock up between the trees, and let the weeds take over everything.

 

He was so engrossed in picking clumps of grass out of the path and listening to random songs from the eighties (and remembering what _he'd_ been like in the eighties) on his iPod that he missed everything until his cell went off at half past ten, Spock's name flashing on the display.

 

"Mornin', darlin'," he drawled, yanking the earphones out. "What can I do you for?"

 

"Are you home?"

 

"Sure am, why?"

 

"I have been ringing the bell for ten minutes."

 

McCoy promptly hung up and creaked to his feet, brushing off his knees and turning back into the cool shade of the hall. He jerked open the door to find Spock sitting on the porch railing in a white t-shirt and the bottom half of his leathers, helmet and jacket abandoned on the boards and the bike itself basking in the sun on the driveway.

 

"You _drove_ here?" McCoy said, and swore. "Get inside and get that shit off."

 

"Would you prefer I rode without it?"

 

"I'd prefer you walked," McCoy said. "Or took a bus. Or a cab. Or called me!"

 

"I called you a minute ago," Spock pointed out, stripping off his boots and leathers. The fabric was on fire; when McCoy touched his hands to Spock's flushed face, his skin _burned_.

 

"My God, man, you're practically goddamn feverish," he snapped. His skin was dry where it should have been pouring, and Spock followed him into the kitchen wearing a curious expression when he darted for a tall glass of cool water. "Get that down your fool neck and _sit down_."

 

"Leonard, why...?"

 

"You'll have gone and given yourself heatstroke," he snapped.

 

"Ah," Spock said. "I am merely dehydrated. I have endured far hotter summers in Sendai."

 

"A long damn time ago," McCoy said sharply. " _Sit_." He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and McCoy snapped his fingers at the t-shirt. "Get that off. You got anything lighter than jeans with you?"

 

"I have a pair of cotton slacks."

 

"Put them on," McCoy said, and barked, " _Sit_!" when Spock moved to rise again. "I'll get your damn bag."

 

When he returned with the backpack Spock had abandoned on the boards with his helmet and jacket, the flush had receded from Spock's high features, and when he palmed the pale forehead, the burn was beginning to falter and die out again. He waited barely long enough for Spock to swap the light jeans for the barely-there cotton slacks, and then reeled him in with an arm around the hips to kiss him and tug at the shirt.

 

"I said this off too," he insisted.

 

"I am not _that_ overheated, Leonard."

 

"I didn't say nothing about overheating," McCoy grinned, and Spock shrugged out of the shirt, possibly to hide the eye-roll. McCoy kissed him again, tasting orange juice under the water, and stepped back out of temptation's way. "You're a goddamn idiot."

 

"Apparently so."

 

"How you feelin'?"

 

"Quite well, if somewhat tired."

 

"Tired?"

 

"I did not sleep well," Spock eyed his shorts. "Are you...gardening?"

 

"I was," McCoy said. "Why didn't you sleep? Your chest?"

 

"My neighbours."

 

"Ah," McCoy paused. "The garden has a hammock in the shade if you feel like catchin' a few while I work. I don't think there's much flowerin' out there."

 

"You don't think?" Spock raised an eyebrow.

 

"I've been neglectin' it since you."

 

"Since I what?"

 

"Since you showed up," McCoy said, waving a hand. "Since you bent that fine ass over a pool table in _Harry's_ and handled a cue like a rent-boy off the docks."

 

The other eyebrow joined the first, and McCoy snickered.

 

"You do, don't act so damn surprised. Where's your inhaler?"

 

"In my bag."

 

"Bring the bag, then," he commanded, and turned on his heel.

 

He had never brought Spock out to the garden, he realised. The conservatory once or twice, but never in weather good enough or warm enough to really look much at the garden. He snagged the throw off the rocker in the conservatory as they passed through the glass door into the yard, and drew Spock right out to the apple trees before spreading it on the ground in the shade.

 

"Knock yourself out," he said, waving at it. "Mi casa es su casa. Literally, soon enough. I gotta get this path sorted, then we'll see about lunch."

 

Spock kissed him once, full of - _something_ \- and sank down onto the blanket cross-legged. "I will meditate," he announced, and McCoy shrugged.

 

"Whatever floats your boat, darlin'."

 

*

 

McCoy stepped out into the sunlight, drying off his hands on a towel, and smiled at the sight before him. He'd stripped out all the grass and weeds choking the path, and in the shade under his apple trees sat Spock, cross-legged on the pale blue blanket, eyes closed and tuned in to whatever he was playing on his mp3 player. McCoy knew he did it, but he'd never actually seen him meditate before, and he stood in the doorway and watched for some ten minutes, drinking in the serene beauty of him, before crossing the grass in bare feet to sink to his knees on the blanket as silently as possible.

 

"Spock," he whispered.

 

Nothing happened, so he crouched carefully over him to brace his hands by those narrow hips. When still nothing, he forewent the secrecy and kissed him, absorbing the flinch with a hand to the small of Spock's back, and offering a small, secret smile into the kiss when the pressure was returned, and Spock's hands cupped his neck. Guiding with the hand in his back, he pushed forward until Spock fell, bringing his spine to the blanket without breaking the kiss for a moment, and bracing himself with his hands either side of Spock's shoulders, hovering over him - and knowing, when Spock's legs shifted to bracket him, that his intent had been read.

 

"Leonard," Spock's voice was a whisper; his earphones were still in, and he probably couldn't hear himself. "Your neighbours..."

 

McCoy unscrewed one earpiece to kiss the lobe and whisper, "You just keep meditatin', sweetheart," before screwing it back in and tugging the clasp of the cotton slacks apart. He shifted aside to draw them - and Spock's underwear - off entirely before resettling and popping the button on his own jeans.

 

"Leonard..."

 

He settled back to kiss away the protest, pinning the long body to the blanket and the grass, and when he felt the relaxation run up him, shifted to trail open, wet kisses down his chest and stomach, around his hips, and suck a bruise into the delicate skin of his inner thigh as he opened his own jeans and drew the tube and condom out of the pocket. He had planned this, after all. Spock was too damn enticing in such little clothing for this _not_ to have happened.

 

It was slow and serene, gentler than McCoy was used to giving, and softer than Spock was used to receiving. McCoy took his time, drawing one shivering orgasm out of him on his fingers alone, before coaxing him back into life and pushing his cock inside in one long, slow stroke that sent a ripple of pleasure up Spock's back and down again, until McCoy had no choice but to catch his waist in his hands and kiss the centre of his chest.

 

"You're so goddamn _beautiful_ ," he murmured there, and Spock's heel hitched higher over his ass to his lower back, pulling him to crouch over him and thrust lightly through wet nips to his neck and clavicle, plucking at his skin with his lips until he carried a tiny chain of marks instead of his usual deep, dark bruises.

 

Orgasm was a gentle thing, serene and blissful and _quiet_ , rippling through first Spock and then himself, and when the last shivers died away, he took his time, rubbing his hands under Spock's back and kissing him deep and long and still, memorising the feel of him, sprawled out in summer like this.

 

*

 

They stirred from the grass when the sun crept towards the horizon. They had stayed basking in the lazy heat, half-naked and so relaxed as to be boneless, and hadn't spoken. McCoy had traced his fingers over the pale expanse of Spock's chest, bypassing the odd narrow scar and smudging invisible fingerprints into the faintly pinked patches of skin that he had kissed before. He had dozed. Spock had lain, and done nothing.

 

When the sun slipped, and the shadows of the grass stalked across the patio like a particularly camp gay pride parade, waving in the breeze, McCoy had finally summoned the energy to move. They said nothing as they retreated to the house; Spock donned his grass-stained clothes without comment, and did not retrieve his hand from McCoy's, going where he was bid.

 

"Takeout?" McCoy murmured in the cool gloom of the hallway, ghosting his fingers over the juts of hip under the cotton, and absorbing the heat of him when Spock pressed in for a kiss. He tasted of satisfaction.

 

"No."

 

They did not eat, and McCoy never recalled caring.


End file.
